Mine explosion puts two Airmen on different paths to recovery

  • Published
  • By Master Sgt. Michael A. Ward
  • Air Force Civil Engineer Support Agency
TYNDALL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. (AFPN) --  One year ago, two Air Force civil engineers were severely injured when a land mine exploded. The two were assigned to the 455th Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan. One had his foot blown off. The other received serious damage to both legs.
 
The explosion sent both men on separate journeys toward recovery. One underwent a below-the-knee amputation and a long rehabilitation process at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. The other still has both legs, but is in constant pain and faces years of physical therapy. 

Their day started routinely -- as routinely as a day in a combat zone could. Staff Sgt. Chris Ramakka, an explosive ordnance technician deployed from the 6th Civil Engineer Squadron at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., and other EOD Airmen were cleaning up an old Soviet artillery site approximately 12 miles from Bagram.
 
“The guys had scouted out the area the day before, and we were picking up 122 mm and 155 mm tank rounds,” Sergeant Ramakka said. “I was walking back and forth looking for stuff on the ground, picking it up and taking it away.” 

His squadron commander, Maj. Matthew Conlan, deployed from the 422nd Air Base Squadron at Royal Air Force Croughton, England, was out with the team, observing the removal operation.
 
“I like to go out with my guys,” the major said. “If they’re swinging hammers, I’ll swing hammers with them. If they’re pouring concrete, I’ll pour concrete with them. It gives me perspective and expertise.” 

The area was a few hundred feet from a known mine field, but it had been marked off and they were well away from it. 

“If we had known we were working in a mine field we wouldn’t have been there. It wouldn’t be worth our time, because you can get blown up in a place like that,” Sergeant Ramakka said.

“Besides,” he said, “the Afghans were walking around all over the place. If the locals are walking around -- now, that’s not a guarantee -- you are pretty safe.” 

They weren’t. Somehow, the markers had moved, been moved or had been incorrectly placed to begin with. They had been walking in a mine field for hours without so much as a misstep. That was about to change. 

“There’s a picture of us that Major Conlan took probably not 30 seconds before I stepped on the mine,” said Sergeant Ramakka. “I was probably standing on it for a minute or so while I was talking to him. Then I went to move …”

Sergeant Ramakka’s story

“I thought that the major had tried to kill me,” Sergeant Ramakka said. “It didn’t even occur to me that it could have been caused by me, but eventually I realized what happened.” 

Sergeant Ramakka had stepped on an old Soviet pressure-sensitive anti-personnel mine, designed to blow up not when weight is put on it, but when it is removed. As he stepped off the mine, it exploded, blowing off his left foot and the tips of two fingers on his right hand, and damaging his right leg. 

“Right after, I saw my leg and I was pretty irritated. I was angry and hitting the ground when sanity caught up to me and said, ‘You know, you’re in a mine field.’ So I rolled back over and waited. 

“I assessed myself, wiggled my fingers, took off my gloves, looked at my hands and I was happy because I still had my knee. If I was going to lose my leg, it’s easier if it’s below the knee. I never thought I was going to die. It hurt, but it’s supposed to, so I wasn’t really shocked by that.” 

Major Conlan, who was behind Sergeant Ramakka, was blown to the ground, his right leg shattered and his left leg severely injured. 

Civil engineers in the area quickly began applying self-aid buddy care to try and stabilize the injured Airmen. Eventually they were joined by an Army medic. 

“I remember the guys were down there looking for my foot and I’m thinking, ‘It’s gone. You’re not going to find that thing,’” Sergeant Ramakka said.

The two Airmen were airlifted to the hospital at Bagram AB. Despite the severity of his injuries, the medical staff was able to save Major Conlan’s leg. Sergeant Ramakka’s left leg was too damaged to save and was amputated below the knee. 

“It’s not something somebody wants to happen to them, but at the same time it could have been worse. It was a crappy experience, but I’m alive.” 

After two days in the Bagram hospital, Sergeant Ramakka had short stays at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and Wilford Hall in San Antonio. He was then transferred to the amputee unit at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio to heal, begin rehabilitation and be fitted for a prosthetic leg. 

“When I first got my leg, I wanted to just take off walking on it all the time. I started walking on it before they finished screwing it together. They weren’t too happy about that.” 

It didn’t take long for him to go from walking to running, something he said he never really cared for before.

“Now, that’s all I want to do. It’s rough running on a regular prosthetic leg. It’s jarring, but you get used to that.” 

Sergeant Ramakka recently received a new leg designed for running. Made of high-tech materials, it’s lighter, more flexible and relatively more comfortable. 

“It hurts a little less than the other one, but there’s still nothing really there absorbing your shock. If you don’t have enough socks on, you’ll bottom out and that really hurts.” 

He said he can already run a mile with it and hopes to get up to three miles soon.

“It’s just a matter of time and patience. If you go too fast you’ll hurt yourself and set yourself back a few weeks. I’ve seen it happen. Guys will bruise so much they can’t stand in their prosthetic, and they have to wait until the swelling goes down. I don’t want to be one of those guys, but at the same time I don’t want to go slow either.

"I used to be real patient, but I have a lot less (patience) now because of the accident. I’m reacquiring it, but it’s taking time.” 

His newfound love of running is driven in part by his desire to stay in the Air Force and remain in the EOD field. 

“I got hurt over there, but you can’t really blame the Air Force. You can’t blame anybody. I tried to blame myself for a little bit, but it’s not like I did anything stupid. I think if I had been hurt actually doing my job and trying to disarm something, I would be a little more concerned about getting back to work. 

“We did everything right. We asked if there were mines there and they said ‘no.’ I don’t know 100 percent whose ball that was, but you’re in Afghanistan and there are mines everywhere. If you tried looking for them all, you’d never walk anywhere.” 

Before he can get back to work, he still has more surgery and months of rehab to go through.

“There are 50 or so guys in there missing limbs, but there is a lot of camaraderie with the other amputees. At the same time, it can get depressing, especially when the new guys come in. They are usually pretty down about the whole thing. I definitely have my ups and downs, but my leg’s not going to grow back by complaining. I can’t whine it back into existence.” 

He goes to the amputee unit at Brooke every day and spends hours going through an exhausting and sometimes painful process of relearning how to walk and function with his different prosthetic legs. 

“It has been a while since I can remember not being in pain, but that will go away, they say. The upside is, I’ve got a bunch of different legs.” 

When he’s not at the amputee unit or at home, he’s at the EOD unit at Lackland AFB. “I like coming to the amputee unit and hanging out with these guys, but I miss work.” 

He’s waiting for a medical board to clear him to return to work. If cleared, he will most likely spend the next few years as an instructor, but his goal is to become worldwide qualified again. 

“I think I can do it. It’s just a matter of giving myself the time to build back up physically. This isn’t going to hinder me at all. It just might make it a little harder for me than for everybody else.”

Major Conlan's story

“I don’t remember hearing the explosion. What I remember was something like someone flicking the lights on and off,” Major Conlan said. “Then, everything went into slow motion and I’m on the ground wondering what the hell just happened. 

“Chris had been carrying a rocket-propelled grenade booster and I thought it had blown up in his hand. I looked over, but his hands were still there. So I looked down, and there was this leg waving around, but the foot was gone. I thought, ‘Oh, a land mine, better look at yourself.’ I looked down and my right leg was bent below the knee. There was this huge hole with bone and mud, and blood was just pouring out of it. I remember thinking, ‘Is this thing even attached?’ 

“It was an old Soviet anti-personnel mine, and it did what it was supposed to do: incapacitate.” 

The blast shattered Major Conlan’s right leg, and his left leg was severely damaged by shrapnel. One piece tore a fist-sized hole in his left thigh and barely missed a major artery. “The doc told me that if the damage had been a millimeter off in any direction, I would have been dead in two minutes.” 

As nearby Airmen began attending to them and applying care, the gravity of the situation began to sink in.

“I went through every emotion known to man in the hour after it happened. I remember being scared and thinking, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to die, I’m never going to see my wife and kid again.’

“I also remember being extremely pissed at one point. Staff Sgt. Robert Jones (a heavy equipment operator deployed from the 437th CES at Charleston AFB, S.C.) sat and talked to me while they worked on me. He said he could tell when I got mad because I cursed a blue streak for about 10 minutes. He’s a very devout man, but I think he understood. It was quite painful.” 

Eventually, a helicopter from Bagram arrived and evacuated them to the base hospital. 

“When I woke up at Bagram after the first surgery, I asked, ‘I have one leg, right?’ They said, ‘No, you have two.’ I was surprised and ecstatic. I had my leg and foot, and while they looked like five little stuffed sausages, those were my toes.” 

The leg was saved, but Major Conlan would have to endure eight surgeries, painful skin grafts and the relocation of two calf muscles. 

“Even with all the pain I’ve gone through, there’s a certain joy in knowing that’s my foot down there. It would have been a lot easier if I had just lost the leg and gone with a prosthetic, but that’s my foot.” 

The leg, which was swollen to almost double its size, is surrounded by an 18-inch round metal brace called a Taylor Spatial Frame. Screws anchor it to the bones in his leg and wires run through the shattered bone fragments to hold them in proper alignment.
 
Although the brace is painful, the major takes a certain amount of glee in the reactions it draws. 

“It makes grown men cringe. People look at the wires, and go, ‘Ohhhhhh!’ Little kids stare at it and say, ‘What is that?’ and their parents get embarrassed.” 

The blast caused nerve damage to Major Conlan’s right leg, which has no feeling. He could still lose the leg and is very religious about keeping the pins and screws clean to prevent infection. He’s in constant pain and he’s only in the healing phase. When he’s better, he can look forward to at least six months of physical rehabilitation. 

“There are days where I’m completely frustrated because this is a long-term thing, and I’m never going to make it back to where I was. I may only get to about 80 percent. I could have lost my leg or lost my life, so I’ll take the 80 percent, but it is frustrating. My family has been a great help, supporting me through all of this. I wouldn’t be doing as well as I am without their help.” 

Adding to the frustration is the uncertainty about his future. Because of the extent of the damage, Major Conlan said he may be facing medical retirement, something he doesn’t want. 

“I’ve been associated with the Air Force every second of my life. I love being in the Air Force. I love what I do. If I can get to the point where I can meet all the standards and pass the physical training test, then there will be no need for a medical board. But because we’re pretty sure there’s going to be some residual nerve damage, I’ll probably have to meet the board.” 

Despite the pain and the uncertainty about his career, Major Conlan said he has no anger about being injured, and he doesn’t second-guess his decision to go out that day. 

“You can’t see a land mine in the picture and I’ve looked at it a number of times. You can’t see it. I was three feet behind Chris and if he had missed the mine I probably would have stepped on it. Chris has apologized to me and to my wife, but we’ve both told him, ‘It’s nobody’s fault.’” 

“There are times when I think I’m the luckiest man in the world. I burned up a lot of mojo that day. My leg is still attached to me. Granted, I have a lot of rehab and a lot of healing and some loss of use for the rest of my life, but I’m pretty fortunate on how things could have gone. The only regret I have is that’s not the way I wanted to leave Bagram.” 

Update

Sergeant Ramakka and Major Conlan were interviewed for this story in October. Since then, Sergeant Ramakka has been medically cleared to return to work. He is assigned to the 342nd Training Squadron at Lackland AFB as an instructor in the EOD preliminary course. 

Major Conlan had the brace removed from his leg in January. He wears a small brace on the leg and uses a cane to help maintain his balance, but there are no longer any pins, screws, wires or metal holding the bones together. 

He still has nerve damage in his right leg, but has been able to move his toes slightly, which, he said, could mean the nerves in the leg are starting to come back. He has started physical therapy. 

Major Conlan returned to work part-time in November at the Air Force Security Forces Center at Lackland AFB, handling anti-terrorism and force protection issues for Northern Air Forces. He still faces the possibility of a medical board.